From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-
Markin comment on this series:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my early 1960s youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American for Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.
As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but just not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose for educational purposes only:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
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Workers Vanguard No. 1006
3 August 2012
Carlos Montes Saddled with Probation
The court case against Chicano activist Carlos Montes ended on June 5 in Los Angeles when Montes pleaded “no contest” to one count of perjury in exchange for the local district attorney dropping the three remaining felonies against him. Although Montes will receive no prison time, he now must serve three years of formal probation, which will keep him under the thumb of the capitalist state, and 180 hours of community service. He also is prohibited from possessing any weapons. Montes was originally charged with six felonies, two of which were dropped on March 27, and faced up to 18 years in jail.
A leftist political activist for 40-plus years, Montes is a supporter of the reformist Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and writes for its newspaper, Fight Back! He was one of the victims in an FBI frame-up of 24 leftists, antiwar organizers and union activists. Beginning in September 2010, the FBI raided homes and offices, mainly in the Midwest, as part of an “anti-terror” witchhunt (see “Protest FBI Raids on Leftists, Union Activists!” WV No. 966, 8 October 2010). Early on 17 May 2011, the FBI and an L.A. Sheriff’s SWAT team broke down Montes’ door and, with automatic assault rifles leveled, ransacked his home, seizing his notes and papers.
The agents arrested Montes under reactionary gun control laws, claiming that he had violated a firearms code because he supposedly had a felony on his record and therefore was prohibited from owning a gun. However, as the Committee to Stop FBI Repression pointed out, “according to a recent court document, this charge was sentenced as a misdemeanor. The prosecution is basing its case on this 42-year-old misdemeanor, disguising it as a bogus felony” (fightbacknews.org, 25 March). That misdemeanor stems from a 1969 student strike for black, Chicano and women’s studies at East L.A. College during which police beat and arrested protesters. On his way home, Montes was arrested and accused of assaulting a sheriff’s deputy—with an empty soda can!
While we certainly welcome the fact that Montes will not be imprisoned, the onerous penalties that he has been saddled with are not a “victory against repression” as the FRSO’s Web site trumpeted. In fact, what transpired is the normal workings of the American “injustice” system—bogus felony charges threatening decades in prison are routinely leveled in order to coerce plea agreements to lesser charges. In the same posting, the FRSO touted its petition campaign calling on Barack Obama, Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism, and his top cop Attorney General Eric Holder to “Stop the FBI campaign of repression against Chicano, immigrant rights, anti-war and international solidarity activists now!” But the very business of the FBI is repression, and it is Obama and Holder who—in upholding the interests of the racist capitalist ruling class—unleash such agents of state terror against workers and the oppressed.
During the 2008 elections, the FRSO pushed the dangerous myth that the election of Obama would reverse the worst policies of George W. Bush. But Obama’s intent always was to wage a more effective “war on terror,” and he has since implemented repressive measures that go well beyond what Bush accomplished. So-called socialists who seek to pressure the capitalist Democratic Party to “do right” are an obstacle to mobilizing the working class and the oppressed in defense of their own interests.
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